Dunedin Coca-Cola Plant To Close; City Discusses Fate Of Property

DUNEDIN, FL — The City of Dunedin in the process of scheduling a meeting with Coca-Cola officials and members of Pinellas County Economic Development to discuss the fate of the Coca-Cola manufacturing plant at 427 San Christopher Drive following the announcement that Coca-Cola will close the facility at the end of 2021.

The announcement was made Friday after Dunedin Mayor Julie Ward Bujalski received a letter from Coca-Cola North America stating that the Dunedin plant will be consolidated with the Peace River Citrus Products, which is planning a $98 million expansion to its Bartow facility, expected to be completed in 2022.

"As part of the plan, we have made the difficult decision to stop producing beverages at our Dunedin facility by the end of 2021," wrote Coca-Cola officials in the letter to the mayor. "These decisions were not made lightly, and we regret that there will be job impacts for associates currently working in production in Dunedin."

Coca-Cola officials said the company recently conducted an extensive analysis of the Dunedin plant, which is nearly 80 years old, and decided that the projected infrastructure needed to maintain the plant was too cost-prohibitive.

"Moving manufacturing to our long-term partners, Peace River, allows us to streamline operations and to significantly modernize older CCNA juice manufacturing capacity to a new state-of-the-art facility," the letter continued.

Coca-Cola said it hopes to offer Dunedin Coca-Cola employees the opportunity to transfer to the new Bartow facility or other Coca-Cola locations.

The 415,593-square-foot plant, built in 1944, The property is zoned for industrial use. According to the Pinellas County Property Appraiser, the property is worth about $9 million.

Dunedin residents have begun weighing in on the businesses they'd like to see occupy the old plant including a food venue similar to Armature Works in Tampa or a craft brewery, adding that they don't want more apartments or town homes.

The bottling plant is listed as one of Dunedin's major employees. Patch attempted to contact the company to see how many employees will be impacted but there was no response to phone calls and emails.